


The Play's the Thing

by dashakay



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashakay/pseuds/dashakay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why is he talking to <em>her</em>, a lowly freshman girl without a Benneton sweater or boobs?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Play's the Thing

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the late 80s because of course.

The first time Gillian Anderson meets David Duchovny is at the auditions for the spring play,  _Romeo and Juliet_. She’s fifteen years old, has just gotten her braces off and her hair is four different colors. 

*

She knows _of_ him, of course. He’s difficult not to notice, even in a high school as large as theirs is. He’s a junior to her freshman. David’s tall and broad-shouldered, with a shock of brown hair always falling in his eyes. Some days he walks down the hallways wearing his red and black letter jacket like the jock he is, surrounded by a small crowd of other jock boys who seem to delight in shoving him and calling him “Dukes.” Other days, he slouches in a black leather jacket, carrying around a well-worn copy of _Waiting for Godot_ , like the disaffected intellectual he seems to want to be. Her friend Angie, a year older and light years cooler, tells her that David runs cross-country and plays tennis but he’s also a really good actor and is the lead in most of the plays, so it all makes sense. 

David is in her French class but sits at the opposite side of the classroom. Sometimes when Madame Weinstein is yammering on about the conjunctive, Gillian slides her eyes across the room to him, watching him moodily chew on a pencil. His French is quite good but his accent is terrible. He’ll need to work on that if he’s serious about being an actor, she thinks. 

* 

The day of the audition, Gillian blasts the new Siouxsie and the Banshees record on her stereo and dresses carefully in her best vintage psychedelic print shift dress, fishnet stockings and her black Doc Martens. She somehow gets a brush through her tangled hair and pins it up in something resembling a French twist. She gives herself cat eyes with black liquid eyeliner and smears on dark red lipstick. She fiddles with the ring in her nose, which Angie pierced three weeks ago using an ice cube and a sewing needle, and wonders if she should take it out. Fuck it, she thinks. If Mr. Carter doesn’t like her the way she is, he can just go to hell. 

After school is over, she finds the corridor outside Mr. Carter’s office reeking of Aqua Net and Giorgio perfume, full of girls, preening and applying baby-pink lipgloss, dressed in the latest from Esprit, their hair in full poof. _Real_ girls, pretty girls, the kind she can never talk to because they know the secret to being a proper girl and she doesn’t. Her heart sinks. 

And then she spots him, loping down the hall, this time clutching _The Collected Works of William Shakespeare_. 

Several of the girls smile and toss their hair in his direction. “Hi David,” one coos. “Are you going to be my Romeo?” He waves them off like he’s Charlie Sheen or something and they’re merely groupies. 

Gillian looks down at her copy of the play, suddenly afraid she’ll forget her monologue. “My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain; And Tybalt’s dead, that would have slain my husband,” she mutters softly to herself. 

“Hey, your name’s Gillian, right?” she hears a voice say and looks up from her perch on the floor. It’s him, David, and he’s smiling at her. At her. 

She nods. Why is he talking to _her_ , a lowly freshman girl without a Benneton sweater or boobs? 

“Want to run some lines?” 

“Uh no thanks, but, like, I need a moment to myself,” she says and immediately regrets it. What’s _wrong_ with her? 

“Cool,” he says, shrugging. 

She wants to open the locker behind her, curl up inside and maybe die. 

Soon enough, she’s called in to read for Mr. Carter, a youngish guy with an accent that’s almost a parody of a California surfer dude. He’s an English teacher and directs all the school plays. 

Her Juliet monologue comes out probably too fast, but she gives it her all. 

 _Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?_  
_Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name_  
_When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?_  
_But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?_  
_That villain cousin would have killed my husband._  
_Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring!_  
_Your tributary drops belong to woe,_  
_Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy._

“Mmm, yeah, that’s _awesome_ ,” Mr. Carter says afterwards. “I see that you’re just a freshman. Did you study _Romeo and Juliet_ in middle school or something?” 

“Something like that,” she says, not wanting to go into the whole rigmarole about how her mother loves Shakespeare and always read it to her and her brother before bed. Or that when they lived in London they went to see a Shakespeare play at the Globe at least once a year. It’s too complicated and she’d prefer to be thought of as a woman of mystery anyhow. 

“Stick around. I’m going to have to read with one of the guys, okay?” 

She nods, feeling a thrill go through her. She’s good at this, she realizes. Really good. 

* 

An hour later, she and David are the only ones left waiting. He’s clearly the one that she’s going to read with. 

“You probably should’ve run lines with me,” he says with a smirk. 

He has the prettiest eyes, she thinks. She can’t decide if they’re green or if they’re gray. 

Mr. Carter calls them in and hands them mimeographed sheets of paper. “I want you two to do this scene for me.” 

“But we haven’t practiced it,” David complains. 

“That’s _exactly_ what I’m looking for, Mr. Duchovny.” 

Gillian fights the urge to laugh. Then again, she knows this scene better than her multiplication tables. 

David says, “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun!” 

She’s stunned. He’s good. David has a nice sense of the cadence of Shakespeare. True, he could stand to use a more refined accent, but he puts just the right amount of emotion into it. 

She can feel the dialogue flowing between them like a rushing river. They seem instinctively to understand each other’s rhythms.  

Romeo:  
_I take thee at thy word._  
_Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptis’d;_  
_Henceforth I never will be Romeo._

Juliet:  
_What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night,  
So stumblest on my counsel?_

Romeo:  
_By a name_  
_I know not how to tell thee who I am:_  
_My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,_  
_Because it is an enemy to thee._  
_Had I it written, I would tear the word._

Juliet:  
_My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words_  
_Of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound._  
_Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?_

Montague is just barely out of her mouth when Mr. Carter yells, “Cut!” 

“Did I do something wrong?” she asks, her heart thumping.

“It’s both of you,” Mr. Carter says. “Can you make it less romantic?” 

Less romantic, she thinks indignantly, has he even _read_ the play? 

David raises his hand, somehow managing to look sheepish and arrogant at the same time. “Um…Mr. Carter? Like, isn’t that the whole point of _Romeo and Juliet_?” 

Mr. Carter rolls his eyes. “Just don’t go over the top with it, you two. Keep the romance subtle.” 

If there’s one thing the play is not, it’s subtle. But if that’s what Mr. Carter wants, she’ll give it to him. 

* 

They walk out of Mr. Carter’s classroom together. David slings his leather jacket over his shoulder and turns to her. “You’re really good, you know,” he says. “Have you been in a lot of plays before?” 

She looks up at him, feeling like he must be at least a foot taller than her. “No, just a couple of little things in middle school.” 

David brushes the hair out of his eyes. “Well, there’s a lot I can teach you. About acting in a play.” 

“You think we’re going to get it?” Her face feels unnaturally warm. 

He rolls his eyes. “Of course we are. No one else in this school can act their way out of a paper bag.” 

* 

The next morning, the cast list is posted on the bulletin board outside Mr. Carter’s classroom. David is Romeo and she’s Juliet. 

She can’t stop smiling. She did it, she really did it. Gillian hears footsteps behind her and a masculine voice whispers in her ear, “You’re going to be a star.” 

She turns and David is standing there, grinning. “You think?” she says. 

“I _know_ ,” he answers. He bends down and kisses her cheek. “This is only the beginning for you, Gillian.” 

She watches David walk down the hallway, wearing his letter jacket. This is only the beginning, she thinks, touching her cheek. 

“Thus with a kiss I die,” she whispers to herself. It’s Romeo’s line but it fits. 

David turns the corner at the end of the corridor and disappears. She touches their names printed on the cast list. 

_Romeo – David Duchovny_

_Juliet – Gillian Anderson_  

“I die,” she whispers again.


End file.
